SIDS DOCK - Seychelles vice-president of global renewable energy initiative |26 September 2016

Seychelles is one of two vice-presidents of the Small Island Developing States’ global renewable energy and energy efficiency initiative SIDS DOCK for 2016-17, representing the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea (Aims) region.

Bahamas of the Caribbean is the other vice-president, while Tuvalu of the Pacific is the president.

SIDS Dock is an initiative among member countries of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) to provide the small island developing states (Sids) with a collective institutional mechanism to help them transform their national energy sectors into a catalyst for sustainable economic development and help generate financial resources to address adaptation to climate change.

In June this year, Seychelles was also elected vice-chair for the Aims region for 2016-2017. The chair is Dominica in the Caribbean and the vice-chair for the Pacific is Samoa.

The Aims region comprises the Sids of Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea.

The executive council was elected by the SIDS DOCK Assembly of member states at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris last December, following the establishment earlier in the year of SIDS DOCK as the first organisation of Sids to be recognised as a United Nations treaty organisation.

It was in September 2014 that former Minister for Environment, Rolph Payet initialled the SIDS DOCK Treaty at a ceremony for the statute establishing the treaty, in the margins of the Third International Conference of Sids in Samoa.

SIDS DOCK was conceived of the combined efforts of members of the Aosis established to mitigate the adverse effects posed by climate change and the rise in sea levels.

Aosis reaffirmed their commitment to Sids with this signing that they will help in institutionalising the mechanisms to transform respective Sids energy sectors into facilitators for sustainable economic development and help with the generation of financial resources to address adaptation to climate change.